Sports

Stanford women finish seventh at PING/ASU Invitational

Freshman Casey Danielson finished in a 12th place tie and the Stanford women's golf team placed seventh at the PING/ASU Invitational in Tempe on Sunday. Photo by John Todd/isiphotos.com

Nationally No. 10 Stanford put the finishing touches on its regular season Sunday with a seventh-place finish at the PING/Arizona State Invitational in Tempe, Ariz.

Swinging alongside seven of the country's top 10 programs among the 15-team field, the Cardinal shelved its 10th top-10 finish in as many events.

Four Cardinal finished in the top 50, led by 12th-place Casey Danielson (71-71-74). Lauren Kim (71-71-75) was one stroke behind Danielson to finish tied for 17th.

Tied for 27th was Mariah Stackhouse, who went 77-70-72 for 3-over. Mariko Tumangan (76-73-75) tied for 47th.

The event served as a final tune-up before the Pac-12 Conference Women's Golf Championships (April 25-27) in Corvallis, Ore.

"We had one good day and two average days," Stanford coach Anne Walker said. "Casey and Lauren were once again steady and consistent. We have some time before the Pac-12 Championships to practice and polish up our games."

The three-day, 54-hole tournament at the par-72, 6,223-yard Karsten Golf Course was won with an 11-under by South Carolina (288-280-285). Washington, Duke and host Arizona State tied for second at 5-under. Arizona (+4) and UCLA (+8) finished ahead of Stanford (295-285-296), which totaled a 12-over.

Danielson's birdie on No. 3 and bogey on No. 9 left her at even-par until a double-bogey on 18. She was even-par for the tournament. Kim was 3-over Sunday and 1-over for the event.

Stackhouse had two birdies and as many bogeys to finish at even-par in her third round.

Starting her round with bogeys on two and four, Tumangan put together birdies on three of the next six holes to move to 1-under. Four bogeys on the back nine left her at 3-over for the day and 8-over through three rounds.

Quirine Eijkenboom (86-86-76) was 10 strokes better Sunday than each of her two previous rounds.

Duke's Celine Boutier won the tournament at 8-under, holding off a final-round 66 from second-place Noemi Jimenez of Arizona State for a one-stroke win.

Women's lacrosse

Megan Lerner earned eight draw controls, one off her own single-game school record, to lead Stanford to a 13-5 victory over visiting Colorado in Mountain Pacific Sports Federation action Sunday.

Stanford (9-2 overall, 3-1 MPSF) took a season-high 40 shots, 19 of which were saved by Colorado's freshman goalie Paige Soenksen. Still, the Cardinal led from start to finish, building a 5-0 lead before Colorado (6-6, 3-2), in its first season of lacrosse, scored more than 23 minutes into the game.

Lerner, who also caused three turnovers and picked up three ground balls, was among four seniors honored while playing in their final home weekend regular-season game.

The others honored were captains Anna Kim and Nina Swanson, and Lyndsey Munoz, all from Maryland.

Fellow senior Rachel Ozer, Stanford's season scoring leader with 18 goals and 9 assists (27 points), will play a fifth season next year while co-terming in environmental engineering, with a specialty of atmosphere and energy.

"It's not only on the draws, but she's playing great in the defensive system, she's drawing charges when we need them, she's sliding, she's creating takeaways," Stanford coach Amy Bokker said. "She really has worked hard to become a complete player."

Stanford rebounded well from a tough 13-12 loss to visiting Denver on Friday in a conference game the Cardinal led, 6-0.

"We need to know how to finish our opponents," Bokker said. "Both losses were games we were up five-plus goals. We're too kind in those situations. We start to lose our discipline and patience.

"It's easy to fight back when you're behind because you can be risky, but you really have to have discipline and patience when you're up. That's really what we talked about, to have that confidence when we're ahead and not stray from the gameplan that was executed so well early on. That really was our focus coming in."

Other than having relative trouble scoring, Stanford was able to close out this one well, responding to one Colorado goal with one from Farr, off a pass by Alexandra Crerend, only 10 seconds later. During another sequence, Farr and Alex Poplawski scored 13 seconds apart.

Stanford returns to action Friday at Oregon (7-4, 3-0 in the MPSF), which joins USC and Denver (each 5-0) atop the MPSF with no conference losses. Gametime is 5 p.m. in a game televised by the Pac-12 Networks.

Baseball

Stanford dropped its third straight to host Oregon State, despite outhitting the Beavers Sunday in a Pac-12 contest in Corvallis. The Cardinal collected 10 hits but stranded eight baserunners in the 2-1 loss.

"I thought we pitched well," Cardinal coach Mark Marquess said. "In most cases you pitched well enough to win but we didn't get them any runs."

Stanford (10-14, 3-6 Pac-12) received outstanding pitching for the third consecutive day, as Chris Viall and John Hochstatter limited Oregon State to six hits.

Viall (1-3) took the loss after 1.1 innings, before Hochstatter shut down the Beavers over the next 6.2 frames.

Hochstatter came in to work out of a jam in the second and got through another tough situation in the third.

He settled in to complete the game, while allowing three hits, striking out four and walking three.

Alex Blandino helped the effort with a nifty over-the-shoulder grab in foul territory to leave the bases loaded in the second inning.

Zach Hoffpauir, Austin Slater and Brett Michael Doran each had two hits for the Cardinal, which hosts UC Davis in a nonconference affair Tuesday at 5:30 p.m.

Softball

Bessie Noll hit a home run in the top of the seventh to give No. 24 Stanford an edge, but host Arizona tied the score in its half of the seventh and won, 5-3, in eight innings Sunday in Pac-12 action.

After Stanford (24-14, 1-8 Pac-12) was unable to capitalize on a bases-loaded situation in the top of the eighth, Arizona's (32-8, 7-5 Pac-12) Katiyana Mauga delivered a walk-off two-run home run to take the victory and sweep the series.

Stanford struggled to find timely hitting throughout the game, leaving a season-high 16 runners on base.

The Cardinal left the bases loaded in three innings and stranded a pair of runners in three innings.

Despite the loss, there were plenty of positives for Stanford, including strong pitching by Madi Schreyer (17-7), Noll's offense and a solid defensive effort from a variety of players.

Schreyer went the distance for the Cardinal, allowing four earned runs on 10 hits, while striking out five. She owns a 2.83 ERA with 129 strikeouts in 166 innings.

Noll contributed on defense in the bottom half of the inning after Arizona tied the score 3-3, throwing out a Wildcats runner at the plate from right field.

Leah White, Jessica Plaza and Hanna Winter each recorded two hits. White notched an RBI on a single in the second inning.

Kylie Sorenson led the team with three walks in the game. She finished the weekend 4-for-9 (.444) with four walks, six RBI and a home run.

Erin Ashby led the Cardinal offensively during the three-game set, batting 3-for-5 (.600) with two home runs, three RBI and five walks.

The Cardinal returns home next week to play host to No. 9 Washington for a three-game series beginning on Thursday at 8 p.m. Thursday's game will be televised on ESPNU and Saturday's game will be broadcast on ESPN2.

Sailing

Stanford's women's team claimed the PCCSC title Sunday, maintaining its lead through the day's competition in Santa Barbara.

The Cardinal won six of the final seven races to win by a margin of 28 points, 36-64, over Hawaii.

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